Queen Victoria who? Tis All about Twitter nowadays....

afzana_javed —


Twitter 'to replace Victorians on primary school curriculum'


Times Online

Primary school pupils could be taught to master Twitter instead of learning about the Victorians, under proposed changes to the curriculum.

Sir Jim Rose, the former head of Ofsted, is due recommendations for updating the primary curriculum to ministers next month.

Three months ago he said in his interim report that primary age children need a greater understanding of information technology. In his final report he is expected to flesh this recommendation out, suggesting that children should be familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter by the time they go to secondary school.

Schools will no longer be required to teach Victorian history or the Second World War, although they can still opt to include them, the Guardian reported today.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/education/article5975430.ece

Whaart?? NO!
This is not fair 🙁 ...or is it?

A friend told me a while back Harry Potter was also going to be added to the GCSE cirrculum!!
Is this the material that will make future thinkers?
The future intellectuals?
The future bimbos?
Or is it good that they dont have to sit through stuffy history lessons like we did once upon a time?

Forum
General

15 comments

You Tue, 31 Mar 2009 - 13:46

Surely, you can't choose who you teach?

As for language, I am sure "tweets" are more relevant nowadays than Olde English.

Saying that, I doubt they would remove the old stuff either. Just move some stuff around a little.

afzana_javed Tue, 31 Mar 2009 - 13:49

YouSurely, you can't choose who you teach?

As for language, I am sure "tweets" are more relevant nowadays than Olde English.

Saying that, I doubt they would remove the old stuff either. Just move some stuff around a little.

haha i meant the crazy series of books

Ya'qub Tue, 31 Mar 2009 - 17:34

This is what happens when you look at the spin of a story by a right-wing, anti-government newspaper. In this case the Times. They would try to find a way to make a Labour proposal look bad whatever it was.

The new proposals are for Primary schools, and they are NOT getting rid of the Victorians in exchange for Twitter.

They are giving schools more choice as to what curriculum THEY want to teach for THEIR students - they are free to teach the Victorians if they wish. They can also focus on different eras of history if it is more relevant to their students. Would you think that teaching something about South-Asian history in a school that is 90% Indian/Pakistani would be a good thing? I certainly think it would.

In my opinion less from-the-top-down, standardised education is a GOOD thing. Some schols have different types of students than other schools. Also, teachers are professionals who should be trusted to have good judgement in both WHAT and HOW to teach.

Completely seperately to this, schools will be encouraged to focus on IT skills more than they currently do. Again, I think this is broadly a good thing. There are very few jobs (and fewer each year) that don't require SOME use of IT equipment, so how much better would it be to teach kids how to do a signature or and out-of-office reply on Outlook? So they don't have to learn it when they start working, instead?

afzana_javed Thu, 2 Apr 2009 - 13:29

MezI am sure the famous Shakespeare is going to around for sometime!

'to be or not to be that is the question'

:p 😉

Ohh Shakespeare is foreveerrrrrr going to be toddling around, But I doubt they teach it at primary school?...Even at secondary school its only 1 play for the entire GCSE course right?

I have to read one Shakespeare play per week :| ... most boring and repetitive storylines ever!! I hate him 🙁 lol

TPOS Thu, 2 Apr 2009 - 18:32

In primary school i done "Macbeth" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" but didnt study them properly. In secondary school, year 7 & 8 looked at some extracts of others, cant really remember what they were, for SATs i done "The Tempest" and "The Merchant of Venice" for GCSE.

Mez Fri, 3 Apr 2009 - 13:52

We did Shakespeare in English, that was ok cause we did Macbeth and then we did an essay on michael jackson thriller music video! lol! Now that was interesting cause did not expect to do an essay on that! Enjoyed English more then History.

In history we did about King Henrey the 8th, other then that can not remember what else we did cause it was long time ago. I think we also did about Queen Elizabeth 1st and the spanish Armada. Was not really that interesting!

TPOS Tue, 7 Apr 2009 - 19:09

History to stay in new curriculum

The Victorians stay, the government promises
History will remain a "central part" of England's primary school curriculum, Children's Secretary Ed Balls has said.

The idea children would learn to use Twitter and social networking sites at the expense of the Victorians and the Tudors was "just complete nonsense".

At the Association of Teachers and Lecturers conference, he apologised again for the post-16 funding disaster.

He said the Learning and Skills Council had sent out letters "based on budgets that weren't there".

Every college affected would be given an update by the end of April, and he did not want any 16-year-old being turned away from college in September, he said.

The government was "working very hard" to make sure budgets would be in place by then, he added.

Accountability

Mr Balls also reinforced his commitment to finding a suitable replacement for the Key Stage 2 tests taken by those aged 10 and 11 at the end of primary school and said he was "looking at making this system better".

"I've made it clear that I've no intention of getting rid of assessment altogether," he said.

A survey of over 3,000 people for the Department for Children, Schools and Families suggests three quarters think information on primary schools' performance should be made public.

Of just under 500 who had children of that age, 78% thought the national curriculum test or "Sats" results were an accurate reflection of their child's performance.

The problem was not the tests per se, Mr Balls said, but the system of school accountability and the way results were being used.

He said the new report cards, which will give schools a single grade based on their achievements and progress, were vital because schools would no longer be measured on one test taken on one day.

The potential replacement for the current tests, called single level tests, will involve primary school children being tested during two possible times each year.

Some teachers have expressed concern at this, fearing that primary school will become about teaching to these tests.

read more @ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7986292.stm

1R4M Tue, 7 Apr 2009 - 22:40

Ya'qubThis is what happens when you look at the spin of a story by a right-wing, anti-government newspaper. In this case the Times. They would try to find a way to make a Labour proposal look bad whatever it was.

The new proposals are for Primary schools, and they are NOT getting rid of the Victorians in exchange for Twitter.

They are giving schools more choice as to what curriculum THEY want to teach for THEIR students - they are free to teach the Victorians if they wish. They can also focus on different eras of history if it is more relevant to their students. Would you think that teaching something about South-Asian history in a school that is 90% Indian/Pakistani would be a good thing? I certainly think it would.

In my opinion less from-the-top-down, standardised education is a GOOD thing. Some schols have different types of students than other schools. Also, teachers are professionals who should be trusted to have good judgement in both WHAT and HOW to teach.

Completely seperately to this, schools will be encouraged to focus on IT skills more than they currently do. Again, I think this is broadly a good thing. There are very few jobs (and fewer each year) that don't require SOME use of IT equipment, so how much better would it be to teach kids how to do a signature or and out-of-office reply on Outlook? So they don't have to learn it when they start working, instead?

ah yaqub
the voice of reason

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